page_title: Irma Contreras
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Irma Contreras / Career
caption_attribution_description: Español: Programa de mano (página 01) de una función del Cuerpo de baile del Liceo Andrés Bello. Junio de 1946. Caracas, Venezuela
context_page_description: Irma Contreras is a former dancer, choreographer, and ballet teacher. She is part of the 1940s generation of Venezuelan dancers. She created and founded the National Ballet of Venezuela with her sister Margot Contreras.
context_section_description: Contreras began her ballet studies in Caracas with Argentine teachers Hery and Luz Thomson in an experimental class that opened at the Andrés Bello School around 1945.
  In 1948 she entered the National Ballet School, directed by Nena Coronil. Together with Vicente Nebrada, she travelled to Cuba in 1952 and danced in the Alicia Alonso Ballet. Upon her return to Venezuela he enters the newly created Ballet Nena Coronil in 1953. During the Marcos Pérez Jiménez government, Contreras applied for a scholarship to study abroad, to expand her knowledge of ballet; the scholarship was granted and, with Nebreda and Graciela Henríquez, she travelled to Paris. While in France, she danced with the ballet companies of Jean Guelis and Paul Goubert. In 1957 she returned to Venezuela and founded the National Ballet of Venezuela with her sister Margot, the first professional ballet company in the country.
  Irma Contreras has been a guest teacher of numerous ballet companies and has taught workshops on the Cecchetti Method.
  In 2006 she published the book Danza Clásica, nomenclatura y metodología (English: Classical dance, nomenclature and methodology).
caption: Programme page 1, from a performance of the Andrés Bello School Dance Corps, June 1946, Caracas, Venezuela
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